Summary

This chapter begins with the story of Sergey Aleynikov, the individual discussed in the introduction. As a Jew, Sergey was often persecuted in his native Russia. He was barred from attending certain universities and could only study what the state allowed. Computer programming was not one of those fields. So, he traveled to the United States in the early nineties to follow his interest. His skill immediately became apparent during his time at Rutgers University where he earned his master’s degree, and afterwards, when he worked for the telecom company, IDT. There, he designed computer systems and wrote the code to route millions of phone calls to the cheapest available phone lines. During his time at IDT, a headhunter contacted him and told him that Wall Street demanded people like him. Companies needed programmers to write the code that would parse huge amounts...